When the Shadows Dance
by RaeLee15
Summary: Her lips crash down on his with the weight of gravity itself. Kakashi peels her hands out from underneath his shirt. "Sakura," he warns. Wet green eyes snap to his in the dark and she leans forward longingly for his mouth. "Please," she begs. Her fingers find the sharp plains of his abdomen once again and everything starts to burn. "I don't want to miss them anymore." Post-war.


_If this is to end in fire_

_Then we should all burn together_

_Watch the flames climb high_

_Into the night_

* * *

><p>"Kakashi!"<p>

He jolts out of his thoughts like someone waking from a bad dream. The cold kocha tea in his hands nearly spills over onto the table but he steadies it quickly, his reflection in the drink rippling uneasily.

Genma watches him carefully. Kakashi rearranges his startled expression into impassiveness and clears his throat.

"Sorry." He turns to Kurenai. "What were you saying?"

The dark haired woman smiles at him from over the top of her glass before she takes a sip. Genma plucks the senbon, annoyedly, from his mouth.

"Kurenai stopped talking five minutes ago."

Kakashi looks between the two of them with a raised white brow.

"So I didn't miss anything important?"

Gai, from beside his rival, nearly snorts into his tea. The corner of Kakashi's right eye crinkles with a hint of amusement at Genma's suddenly bitter expression. He sets the senbon back into his mouth and rolls it loudly between his teeth.

"I was just re-telling the dumpling joke," he says slowly, "from the meeting this morning."

The jonin leans forward, elbows on the table, and strokes his masked jaw in thought.

"Yeah..." he muses. "It was funnier the first time I heard it."

Kurenai smiles slyly to herself, still sipping at her tea, as Genma begins to sputter in irritation. He points an accusatory finger at Kakashi.

"Y-you weren't even there!"

"Not physically," Gai adds, rather seriously. "But in spirit, I felt his presence." He nods his bowl-cut head and Kakashi claps him on the shoulder in thanks.

Genma's pointing finger swivels to Gai.

"Don't cover for him! There in spirit, my ass."

Kakashi gives him a sharp look from across the table.

"Genma," he hisses sarcastically under his breath, "This is a family establishment."

"Stop trying to change the subject," he replies heatedly. "This is the second day in a row that you refused to show up to the Jonin Assembly."

Kakashi pushes away his untouched tea and slouches forward, resting his chin in the crook of his palm. He shrugs his broad shoulders absently.

"Refused is a strong word." Genma opens his mouth to snap back but is interrupted. "And besides, I did show up to today's meeting. Unfortunately, it had finished two hours before."

Kurenai, who had been enjoying the banter, puts down her tea. Gently, as if scolding a child, she crosses her pale arms over her chest and glares down at the ridge of her nose at Kakashi.

"You can play dumb with us but Tsunade knows better. She's furious at you."

He blinks slowly at Kurenai as if she had just told him that the sun was out.

"Seriously," Genma says as he reaches for another dumpling, "we can't vote on a new Commander if every available jonin isn't present. You know this."

He nearly begins to argue when Gai gives him a rather hard clap across the back. It knocks Kakashi's chin from his palm and he, as disinterestedly as one can, glares at him from the corner of his dark eye.

"He's just shy!" Gai exclaims. "Aren't you, Kakashi? Everyone knows that you're going to get the job! I don't expect anything less from my greatest rival." He flashes a shiny grin and Kakashi suppresses the urge to roll his eyes.

Genma scoffs and puts his senbon back between his teeth as he finishes chewing.

"The only jonin in Konoha qualified to be Commander and you don't want the position. It's rather typical."

Kakashi looks up at what used to be the busiest tea-house at lunch time for shinobi. The tables around them are sparsely spotted with the forest green of flak jackets. Civilians catch him looking and their previously unworried expressions morph into something darker, recognition on their lips like bitter tea.

They whisper to each other behind their hands and Kakashi, more uncomfortable than before, stares back down into his untouched glass.

"The only qualified jonin still alive, to be more accurate," he says under his breath.

His companions hear him and the mood at their table instantly sours into something heavier. They all stare down at the freshly refurbished wood tables with a weight between their brows.

Nobody names it, or speaks of it, simply shifting in a subject that they would rather not talk about but can't deny. It shows in the quiver of Genma's lips around his senbon.

Kurenai, who had not gone to war, struggles with trying to find the right words to say. Kakashi watches her attempt to dispel the muddy silence, her lips parting every other moment but never forming words. Gai, rather suddenly, bangs his fist on the table.

"We should go out tonight!" he shouts, wide grin set on his mouth like a belt of diamonds. Kurenai shakes her head slowly.

"It's too short notice for me to find a sitter for Mirai."

"Come on," whines the green beast. "It's been too long! Morale is low, my friends, it is time to do something about it!"

Kakashi says nothing. He suddenly itches to leave.

"I don't know, Gai," mumbles Genma. "It's-It's too soon. I don't think anyone is in the mood for the bars tonight."

Gai scoffs and waves the notion away.

"It is never too soon for bonding! The war was long and hard and-" he glances sideways at Kakashi, "difficult for us all. But I will not allow it to damper our fighting spirit! We should celebrate those of us still here," he says earnestly. "And we should celebrate those who are not."

Kakashi's hands clench tighter around his cold tea. Gai looks at all their faces eagerly, a light shining in his eyes for what would be the first time since Neji's death. His lips begin to tighten around his smile when no one answers him.

"A new era of peace," he says, suddenly serious, "should not be marked by anything less than joy and gratefulness. It would dishonor the price that was paid for it."

Kurenai chews on the corner of her lip. She watches sadly as Gai looks to Kakashi for reassurance but is greeted with a cold aloofness that he cares not to change. Suddenly, her hand reaches across the table to grasp at Gai's long fingers.

"I can ask Hinata if she'll look after the baby. She needs the distraction."

Kakashi notices that she, rather obviously, avoids his eye after saying this. The cold tea starts to ripple uneasily between his hands and the tea house has suddenly grown too hot. His legs start to shift beneath the table, eager to leave.

"Alright," Genma sighs. Gai beams like a child on Christmas. "I'll get the guys to show up. The usual place, right?"

The bowl-cut nods enthusiastically.

"What about you, Kakashi," says Gai, hopeful. "Are you in?"

They look down at the cup clenched too tightly in his gloved hands. He feels their eyes on him so he lets go instantly and untangles his legs from the bench. Slowly, he stretches to his feet and Gai's hopes fade slowly from his aging face. Kakashi's eyes darken as they droop in their disinterest and he shrugs his broad shoulders.

"It would mean alot to us if you came," says Kurenai softly. The other men at the table agree, almost vigorously, and Kakashi slouches his hands into his pockets. He gives another long, slow shrug.

"I've got an appointment."

They say nothing as he makes his way to the door. Genma chews his senbon a little anxiously, watching Gai's crestfallen face turn down towards his empty plate until Kakashi disappears around the corner and into the streets.

He nearly collides with Ten-Ten who, just as hurriedly, tries to get into the tea-house. Easily, he side steps to the left before her forehead can knock against his chest and she stares confusedly up at him, an apology already on her lips.

Their eyes meet and she tenses up awkwardly.

"Is-Is Gai-sensei in there?" she asks. Kakashi pretends not to notice the way she looks at anything but his face. Her shoes have suddenly become the most interesting piece of clothing in all of Konoha.

"Yeah," he replies slowly. "Right-hand corner."

Once more their eyes meet and Ten-Ten presumably opens her mouth to say something more. It lingers on her lips but never makes it past the tongue, her hand gripping tensely at the strap of her backpack. She once again finds refuge on the ground, an unlikely characteristic for someone normally so bold.

It leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

"Kakashi-sensei," she sputters, "I'm really sor-"

"How is Lee doing?" he asks, rather unexpectedly. It startles Ten-Ten and she twists the strap in her hand uneasily.

"Oh, he's-he's doing okay, I suppose."

The awkwardness is palpable. It weighs on her brown eyes heavily and he nods his white head, pretending to take interest in the people over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "About Neji."

The name is like a punch to the girl's face. She nearly flinches at the mention of it but rather badly attempts to cover it up by swatting at a bug that isn't there. He watches chew on the inside of her cheek for a moment.

"Thank you," she replies stiffly. "I am too."

Kakashi prays to Kami that she doesn't attempt to continue the conversation. His skin nearly crawls just thinking about it but to his relief, Ten-Ten excuses herself with a faint bow and disappears into the tea-house. Gai's excited greeting to her could be heard halfway down the block.

He fades into the crowds of Konoha, waiting until he's far out of reach from the tea house to relax. His hand itches for the Icha-Icha book in his pouch as a time killer but now that all the roads and street are in the process of being rebuilt, he has to actively navigate his way through the busy central market of the village. Sighing, he slouches his empty hands back into his pockets.

The sound of hammers and saws is like a mechanical symphony on the way to the hospital, civilians and shinobi alike working hard on the reconstruction of the village. They labor up ramps, carrying steel pipes and lumber, their backs shining with sweat even in the slight November chill. A foundation pipe bursts and floods the first layer of a restaurant to be with water as he passes.

Kakashi catches a few familiar glances along the road but unless it is imperative to acknowledge them, he pretends to not pay too much attention. He makes his way slowly to the north part of the village where the new hospital is housed, ignoring the blatant stares and pitiful looks thrown his way as people mumble to one another that he is Hatake Kakashi, sensei of-well, everyone knows who.

He clenches his jaw irritatedly and tries not to think about just how empty the central market is. Civilians bustle about as usual, tugging children and spouses along the by the hand. Baskets of fresh fruit get spilled onto the dirt, a strange pack of cats chase a frightened dog and shopkeepers excitedly advertise an After War sale on their goods but even then, the prices for everything are still too high.

War has never been cheap.

It's apparent in the severe lack of Konoha headbands and flak jackets against the continuous colorful body of civilians passing through. The lack in numbers shows in the exhaustion painted under the eyes of every shinobi that he sees, everyone picking up one to two extra shifts a day just to keep the village functioning.

It shows in the faces of widows and childless parents wandering through central market with pale faces and ashen expressions. There's the angry brow of brothers without their siblings, the quiver of a young woman's lip because her father is gone and there is nowhere to run from it.

Kakashi watches a lady fumbling in her purse for the cash to pay for a basket of vegetables. Two toddlers tug on her skirt, one screaming the other one crying, while a fussy infant wriggles around in her left arm. Her hair hasn't been brushed and there's a stain on her blouse. The vendor apologizes and tells her that what she has given him is not enough and with wide, watering eyes she starts to rummage through her basket to put back some items.

It's in her face and in her shoulders; the way she slumps forward, bowing her head so that the vendor can't see her cry as she rummages in her purse for money she doesn't have. And when she catches Kakashi looking, the hand in his pocket already clenched around his wallet, he knows that she hates him.

The bright gleam of his headband and the deep colors of his uniform, she can't stand the sight of him. Her husband might've died so that he, this stranger watching her struggle at the market, could live. The injustice of it all weighs like another clinging to her and she awkwardly puts some potatoes and greens back, hoping to Kami that the shinobi will be gone by the time she looks again.

Kakashi makes sure of it. It's suddenly harder to breathe beneath the cotton confines of his mask and he turns into an alleyway and hastily climbs up the side, chakra radiating into his feet.

As he crests over the side, rummaging in his pouch for his novel, Kakashi halts at the edge of the roof. Dread lines his insides like lead and he sighs once more, returning his still empty hands to his pockets.

Tsunade stands before him, glaring and not amused. Even her blonde pigtails whip around angrily in the faintly chilled breeze. Kakashi sighs dramatically.

"Lady Hokage, it would be wildly inappropriate if you and I had an affair. Now please stop following me around or I'm gonna have to tell Shizune."

Her hands fly annoyedly to her hips.

"Are you the one spreading that rumor, Hatake?! I ought to kick your sorry-"

"It was Kotetsu," he interjects. "Apparently you mumble my name in your sleep."

The Hokage's cheeks nearly flush and he tries not to be amused. His eyes, rather defiantly, crinkle in response to her angry sputtering.

"Oh, I'll-I'll kill him, too!"

Kakashi shrugs uncaringly.

"Might as well put Izumo on that list. There's a reason why nobody ever tells _him_ anything."

Another flare of annoyance. Her cheeks, previously flushed, now redden with her impatience and she narrows her honey eyes dangerously. Kakashi is suddenly grateful that they are far away from any office supplies that she could chuck at his head. Her fingers already twitch longingly for a stapler.

"Why weren't you at the meeting today?" she demands. Kakashi blinks slowly.

"Must've missed the memo."

Tsunade hisses irritatedly.

"A message was sent this morning to every jonin, including you."

Down below them, a child screams the name of Madara Uchiha. He glances over the edge of the roof to the group of kids playing ninja on the corner and they toss wooden shuriken at the supposed enemy. He plays dead, clutching at his shirt and moaning in pretend pain.

This angers Kakashi. It boils like acid in his gut.

"I apologize for the inadequacy of your staff. Now if you'll excuse me."

The ninja bows slightly to his Hokage and turns to step off the roof. His foot nearly leaves the edge when she calls after him, her voice carried too loudly on the wind,

"Just nominate Genma!"

Kakashi returns his heel to the ledge and looks back at her over his shoulder. The annoyance and the curl of her lip is gone, replaced by something softer and more pleading. But the glow of her light eyes still glares, demanding his attention.

"Nominate Genma before anyone can nominate you," she continues. "Everyone else will follow your lead."

He stares back out over the newly refurbished rooftops of Konoha, spotting the horizon like colorful stepping stones leading up to Hokage mountain. Kakashi looks into the face resting beside Tsunade's and his mood darkens.

"And the boy?" he asks. She takes a long time to reply, the heels of her sandals clicking loudly against the gravel as she comes to stand right beside him. They look out at the busy streets and bright sky of the village in silence for what feels like another lifetime.

"He isn't ready."

Kakashi glances at her from the corner of his dark eye.

"That's not what you said a week ago."

Tsunade's mouth turns down into a deep frown. It ages her face at least ten years and her thoughts weigh on her brow like the weight of Kami himself.

"He isn't finished mourning," she says softly.

"Are any of us?" he answers darkly.

She looks over at him and studies the sharp line of his jaw and the way it clenches and unclenches beneath the thin confines of his mask. He doesn't meet her eye.

"Nara Shikamaru's blood still runs too cold. He isn't his father."

Kakashi shrugs lazily.

"He could be great."

"So would you," she replies quickly.

He chuckles under his breath, slouching his hands back into his pockets.

"But you have other plans for me."

"Damn that Izumo," Tsunade snaps. "Gossips like an old lady."

Kakashi's eyes crinkle with the faint hint of a smile. But it's gone almost as soon as it arrives. He tilts his head back and stares up into the cloudless mid afternoon sky.

"I was never destined to be Hokage."

Tsunade turns to him, eyebrows raised.

"Since when does Hatake Kakashi believe in fate?"

He doesn't answer for a long time, his neck growing tired of it's outstretched position but he watches a bird flit overhead, joined by another. They tangle and dance together in a flurry of sunlit wings and loud chirps. Even though the glare of noon is nearly blinding, he cups his hand over his eyes and waits until they are out of sight, flitting off towards Hokage mountain.

The left socket suddenly aches and he quickly drops his gaze from the sky.

"It was not _my _destiny that I believed in."

Her face ages another ten years. The frown on her lips deepens and she stares at the intense expressions of her predecessors with something desperate and unnamed.

"Some days," she says slowly, "I'm glad that Jiraiya didn't live to see Kami be so cruel."

Kakashi says nothing. The vague mention of what he would rather not say causes an itch in his feet that cries out for him to flee. But he waits, expecting Tsunade to not be finished just yet.

"Go to the meeting tomorrow, Kakashi. Nominate Genma."

With a slight nod of his white head, he prepares to step off the ledge of the roof. Her hand comes down on the shoulder of his vest and he tenses beneath her touch, desiring the quick rush of falling now more than before. He knows what comes but still says nothing.

"I know it may be too much to ask…but Sakura isn't doing very well." She stares intently at the back of his head. "There are some wounds that even I can't heal, Kakashi."

There's a blur of pale fists banging against a bare, unmoving chest. He sees it behind his closed eyelids as easily as he can see the leak of tears against the sharp hills of her cheeks. She pulls at her pink hair, hunched over their bodies as if her back had been broken and Kakashi, even without the sharingan, can remember her screams as if they never stopped.

Hurriedly, he looks back out into the blinding glare of Konoha but the images won't fade. They play in a loop against the constant hum of his thoughts and he is suddenly angry with Tsunade for bringing her up, as if her face was something he so passively forgot.

Without another word he steps off the edge and falls. Tsunade watches him catch himself easily and start off in a casual walk into central market, obviously pretending that he isn't fleeing. She smirks half-heartedly as she watches him pull a bright orange book from his pouch and flip to a random page, eyes down and focused but never truly reading.

She waits to leave until the glaring white of his hair against the sun is just a dot amongst the bustling color of Konoha and the remainder of it's inhabitants.

* * *

><p>"Mom?" Nara Shikamaru steps out of his sandals and into his house. There's no answer, the hallways dark. His bare feet touch the cool wood floor and with a faint shiver, he pads through the seemingly empty house, the back of his neck sticky with dried sweat. "Mom?" he calls again.<p>

Only greeted with silence, he proceeds to the kitchen. Passing the portrait of his family in the main hall, Shikamaru ignores the way his father's eyes follow him and he hurriedly disappears around the corner. He presses his ear gently to the paper sliding door of his mother's bedroom and listens for any movement. No lights seep out from under the crack against the floor and he nearly sighs with relief; his mother must be out.

With his sweaty long sleeve uniform shirt over his shoulder, bare chested and filthy with sawdust and black stains of dirt, Shikamaru crosses the threshold into the kitchen and stares, rather confusedly, at the mess. Shoe boxes of photographs, tipped over and spilling onto the floor, cover the surface of the table along with what looks like broken pieces of a teacup. Old newspaper clippings, unraveled scrolls of oil paintings and books, tons of them, liter the counters and even the sink. Wet and unsalvageable, they deteriorate before his eyes, the ink bleeding and pages coming apart in soft chunks.

He squints in the dark of the kitchen to see what looks like all of his father's shogi pieces, scattered and broken like smashed china, stuffed into the drawer where the silverware should be.

Shikamaru wearily drops his shirt onto the back of the chair and sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose between two unsteady fingers. He groans, shaking his head in what can only be disbelief. A fire gets lit against the inside of his gut and Shikamaru grips the back of the chair tightly enough to turn the tan knuckles in his hand a ghastly white.

He stares at the mess with burning dark eyes for a long time before picking his way through, careful not to step on anything that will cut open his foot, until he reaches the refrigerator. Opening it up, he pulls out the carton of milk and drinks from it greedily. With every gulp, he pushes each angry thought out of his mind. His lungs ache for air but he doesn't stop, not until he's full and his insides are as cold as the milk itself.

He shakes the nearly empty container when he finishes and lets the fridge swing closed, panting. Shikamaru, with his aching shoulders and sore back, mumbles something about a troublesome mess as he turns around to confront it.

Yamanaka Ino stands in the entryway of the kitchen, her pale blue eyes luminous in the dark. With a start, the not entirely empty carton slips out of his hand and spills to the floor, drenching his feet in cold milk.

Her small hand quickly flits to the light and she switches it on, blinding Shikamaru as he blinks unamusedly back at her.

"What're you doing here?" she hisses.

Shikamaru scoffs and tip-toes over to the sink to get a dish towel.

"I live here," he drones. Leaning his hip against the counter, he balances on one foot to wipe the milk off the other. As he switches legs, Ino pushes aside a corner of the mess on the table to make room for her purse.

She gazes about the kitchen like she would a battlefield, eyes wide and slow at processing the hurricane that erupted there. Shikamaru looks away when she glances back at him, the damage done reflected too easily in her stare.

"Your mother said you wouldn't be home until after dark."

The mention of his mother flares an ugly feeling in his chest. He swallows it down like tar and replies flatly,

"I finished early."

Ino nods, shifting her long blonde hair back over her shoulder.

"I'm guessing," he sighs, "that she asked you to clean this up before I got home."

His teammate nods and wraps her skinny arms around herself, watching as he scrubs the remainder of the milk from between his toes.

"My mom had already brought out the sake by the time I left. I doubt Yoshino-san will be coming home tonight to check if I had done it."

Shikamaru nods silently, knowing without needing to hear it that she also wouldn't be returning home tonight. Sake and the Yamanaka's have never settled too well together.

He uncaringly tosses the dirty towel into the sink and after a few moments of pondering where to begin, he starts to sift through the broken shogi pieces of the drawer. Ino watches him examine the contents for anything salvageable before she sniffs the air.

"Oh man, Shika," she whines. "You stink."

The boy shrugs and continues his work.

"I'll shower when I finish."

Ino puts her hands on her small hips.

"I'm sorry, when _you _finish?"

He turns his dark eyes to her over his tan shoulder and raises a brow.

"Yeah. When I finish." His attention slowly slides back to the drawer. "You can stay if you want, watch tv or something, but I'm here now anyway. I'll do it."

Ino rolls her pale eyes annoyedly.

"It'll take you all night to do this by yourself!"

Her shrieking bothers him but he says nothing about it, sifting through the onyx pieces to find the King. It lays broken in two.

"Then I'll take a shower in the morning."

Shikamaru prepares for her to start yelling about how she didn't come all the way out here just to sit around on his couch. That since his mother asked her, and she was already there, she would damn well clean up, even if he didn't want her help.

But the shouting never comes. He hears the scraping of a chair behind him and he turns to find Ino crawling underneath it, stacking old photos in her hand from the floor.

She stares for awhile at a particular photograph, the hint of what appears to be blonde hair against an ever green background. Shikamaru catches the familiar site of two ragged scars across a tan face and turns away.

Without looking up, she says to him, quieter than normal,

"Go shower. I'll be here."

Opening his mouth to protest, Shikamaru nearly starts nagging that it's his house and he'll clean it himself. But he looks back at Ino, crouching under the table with her head ducked to avoid hitting the underside of it, flipping through the stack of his family photos. A smile curls at the corner of her mouth as she chuckles at something he can't see.

Too tired to continue arguing, and desperately wanting to get this mess cleaned up so he can sleep, Shikamaru accepts defeat and picks his way carefully through the kitchen. The hallways are still dark and the house too empty, he turns right at the corner to trek down to his bathroom.

He hears Ino laugh out loud as he slides open the paper door and lets himself in. Quickly, as if he suddenly remembered just how dirty he actually is, Shikamaru strips away the rest of his uniform. His achy body nearly trembles in anticipation as the hot water begins to steam the bathroom, feeling as if every inch and pore of his body is full of dirt and sawdust.

He lets down his ponytail, dark hair tumbling over his sore shoulders, and he steps into the shower, the water as scalding as he can stand. Shikamaru nearly groans at the pleasure of his tired muscles under the heat, nearly scrubbing his skin raw with his fingernails and soap.

The shoulder blades move painfully under his skin, his back never fully recovered from an injury in the war that being sent straight to reconstruction couldn't help. Pain travels from the center of his back and down into his legs, a hiss on his lips as he shuts his eyes and tries to stretch through it, long hair plastered to his cheeks.

Shikamaru stares down at his feet, hunched over to relieve the pressure in his spine, and watches the dirt and sweat of today's work swirl down the drain. He listens to the nearly rhythmic rain of hot water against the shower tiles and his eyes burn from the shampoo suds but he breathes through the pain, unwilling to make any sudden moves.

Unwilling to stand up and face the thoughts that only hard physical labor can drive out.

The sting in his eyes grows too sharp. Shikamaru opens them and lets the water rinse, his shoulders now lathered in the remnants of what gets washed out of his hair.

He thinks of the picture Ino held in her delicate fingers. His father's arm wrapped around the shoulders of her father, Nara forest blending colors of spring behind them.

They were both smiling, a rare occurrence for Shikaku who hardly ever spared a smirk. It was always Yoshino who would muse that her husband had a wonderful smile thought Shikamaru had only ever seen it a handful of times.

Thoughts of his mother press a red hot iron into the center of his spine. He hisses again, the sharpness of the pain escalating with the rise in his blood pressure and he grips at the slippery tile with his right hand. He pants, the heat radiating back up into his neck and his shoulders, everything stiff and on fire.

Shikamaru closes his eyes, trying to soldier through it so he can get himself standing and out of the shower, the water growing too hot against his skin. But the sound of it, the constant pitter-patter against the tile and the faint hiss of steam, begins to resemble familiar whispers.

Like the static, uneasy hush of troops when they listen to someone's last words, all at once. He remembers it as easily as he remembers yesterday-the panicked, disbelieving murmur after the whining hum of radio silence. The same thought on everyone's tongue, the same fear filling their mouths with the heavy taste of iron.

Shikamaru remembers the wide, terrified look in Ino's eyes. The quiver of her mouth but the irrefutable curl of her small fist. All around them, the troops rallied and hollered and howled to the blood stained sky that they would go on until the bitter end.

For Inoichi. For Shikaku.

There's a blinding flash of bright yellow and bubbling orange, a blur of power and speed unlike anything he's ever seen, sprinting behind Shikamaru's closed eyelids.

A whiskered face, with bared teeth and an angry howl, blue eyes wild with the Will of Fire. Something burns hot at the back of Shikamaru's memory, his heart beating rampantly at the call to arms in a voice he is eager to forget.

He opens his eyes as if lightning had struck him and Shikamaru slams his fist into the tile of his shower with a sudden flare of chakra. The knuckles split open as a thin piece of the wall caves in, leaving a sprawling crack up into the ceiling.

Blood drips down his wrist and into the water at his feet. Shikamaru watches, with a heaving bare chest, as it spirals down the drain. His hand aches and his back prickles and burns with a pain he can't name.

Shikamaru holds his hand against him and leans his forehead against the hot tile. He closes his eyes once more.

"Coward."

* * *

><p>Ino doesn't ask why his knuckles have opened up. She doesn't nag about the blood he trickles all the way from the bathroom and into the nearly clean kitchen. Something knowing crosses her pale eyes and she takes Shikamaru by the arm and sits him down at the table.<p>

Without any words, her palm flickers a medicinal green and she passes it over the broken skin. He watches the wound heal up, a new layer of pink flesh stitching up the split in his knuckles as easily as he breathes.

Ino sucks on the inside of her cheek, concentrating. She doesn't mention the sudden violent flare of his chakra while he was in the shower. And he doesn't tell.

Barely a minute later, his hand is a good as new. Shikamaru flexes it carefully and goes to stand. A sharp sudden burst of pain radiates from his back and he must've made an unpleasant facial expression because Ino watches him with a wary look.

"Anything else I need to check?"

Shikamaru empties his eyes and proceeds, without wincing, to tie his hair up into a ponytail. Water still drips onto his hands and Ino, never one to take no as the first answer, crosses her arms.

Her foot taps impatiently against the floor.

"It's nothing, you troublesome woman," he whines.

She gets up from the chair beside him and saunters back over to the sink where she began to carefully extract the wet, fragile books from one another.

"There were no pieces left of the shogi set, Shika," she says softly. "I'm sorry."

He nods, glancing down at the trash bag by her feet where the shattered pieces are sprinkled over ruined scrolls, unsalvageable books and broken dishes.

"Remind me to hide the set Asuma gave me," he replies lightly.

Ino intends to chuckle but it comes out more of a whimper. They leave the subject untouched and get to work peeling pages and shaking out water from the spines of Shikaku's books. The stack of ones that can be saved is significantly smaller than those that belong in the trash. Ino scoffs as several pages fall apart in her fingers.

"Dear Kami," she exclaims. "I think your mom dumped your dad's entire office into the kitchen!"

Shikamaru shrugs and carefully extracts one book from the other.

"I don't doubt it."

Ino, rather gratefully, pulls out a book that only has a single wet corner. She thumbs through it for any other hidden damage.

"My mom flipped out this morning because she's been wearing his clothes so much lately. They've started to smell more like her than him."

Shikamaru says nothing. He salvages another book but immediately has to dispose of a scroll. The ink bleeds onto his fingers.

They work in silence for at least half an hour. Every once in awhile, he'll feel Ino's eyes on his face but before he can look back at her, she turns back to the sink. Only a few books remain at the bottom of the basin, surely unsalvageable. But they check anyway.

"It's only been two weeks," she says suddenly. Ino dries her hands on a clean dish towel, examining her pruney fingers with distaste. "Feels like a lifetime."

Shikamaru nods and snatches the towel away from her after she agonizingly spends several minutes trying to soak the moisture from her fingers, knowing perfectly well the pruning only fades with time. She makes a face and watches him scrub the ink from under his fingernails.

"Have you heard from Sai?"

A flicker of annoyance crosses his tan face. He throws the towel into the now empty sink.

"Not since the funeral."

Ino's face darkens at the mention of it. The first week they spent back in Konoha, it seemed as if they never wore anything but black for seven whole days. One ceremony after the next, one wake after the next, then straight back to work.

Her chest suddenly aches at the thought of it.

The two of them quietly tie up the ends of the trash bags full of everything that his mother ruined. They head out the back door and around the house, bare feet cold against the wood floor, and up the long walkway to the garbage pickup.

Konoha, not as neon and bright as it used to be, still glows faintly to the west, the Nara compound on the outskirts of the village. Stars blink sleepily overhead and a thin crescent moon hangs in the sky, shining down in small slivers through the passing clouds.

Shikamaru listens to the faint hum of the village, still early in the evening where people are out having dinner and going for drinks. The idea churns his stomach and he silently agrees with Ino who had said that two weeks felt like a lifetime. He stares at the buzzing lit village like a mirage in the desert, foreign and unpalpable.

But to some, to those who had not gone to war, it was just another blink, gone as soon as it came. He frowns at the thought and turns to go inside, hands slouched into the deep pockets of his black pants. Ino follows, humming softly under her breath.

When they get back to the kitchen, Shikamaru stands in the doorway, hip against the frame, and stares at just how much work Ino had managed to get done while he was in the shower. The cabinets had been reorganized and closed, everything that could be salvaged from his father's office rolled up and stacked in neat piles. Even the pictures, which had been scattered chaotically throughout the entire room, were now back in the shoeboxes.

He reaches over and pulls out the first photograph his fingers touch. Ino comes up behind him and to his annoyance, lingers by his shoulder, peering over it. She wobbles on her tip-toes to get a good view.

"Look at you, all chunky and big-headed!" she teases. Shikamaru rolls his eyes.

"I was four, Ino. Growing proportionally is rare at that age."

She laughs, moving the hair from her blue eye.

"Where is that, by the way? Looks like the coast."

Her naturally loud tone grates right into his ear. Shikamaru, with a glare, moves away from her and reaches for a shoebox. He tucks it under his arm and heads back out into the hall, crossing to the left. With the picture in his mouth, he turns on the lamp beside the couch and plops down on it. The boy realizes he hasn't sit down since breakfast this morning and he's suddenly aware of the ache in his feet.

Ino joins him, the shoebox nestled between them. She snatches the picture from his lips.

"You didn't answer my question, blockhead!"

He rolls his eyes at the name.

"Down by the southern coast, yeah. Lord Third insisted that my dad take a vacation after a particularly grueling mission." Shikamaru scratches at the back of his head. "He nearly didn't make it home one piece, apparently."

The two of them think about both of their father's names ended up on the Memorial Stone, without a body to recover. Shikamaru gets a bad taste in his mouth and hurriedly picks out another picture. Ino does the same.

They flip through each one slowly, Ino always asking about where it was from or who was in it if there was a face she didn't recognize. But most of them consisted of Shikaku and Yoshino when they were young and expecting, usually accompanied by Ino or Choji's parents who were also young and expecting.

After making some tea, Ino chattered excitedly to Shikamaru when he returned that there's at least ten pictures of the three of them taking a bath together. With red cheeks he looks at the very, very real photographs of a spiky haired toddler splashing water in a crying Choji's face while Ino covers herself in bubbles. He snatches the small album from her hands as Ino rolls around on the couch, her legs outstretched over his lap, and laughs until it hurts.

He can't help but smile as he watches her split her sides. She grips at her aching abdomen and simmers to down to a chuckle, wiping a tear or two from the corner of her eyes at how flustered Shikamaru had gotten after she mentioned she had now seen him naked. The boy tries to act disgruntled but ends up smirking into his tea.

They go through all seven of the boxes by the time the moon hangs high in the black sky, nearing close to midnight. The last of the photography is split evenly between the two. Shikamaru shows Ino a shot of a rather drunk looking Inoichi being carried out of a bar. She giggles quietly.

"Oh, Shika," she suddenly announces, face now serious and pale eyes soft. "Look at this."

Ino passes over a picture which can only be described as a stolen moment. Nearly blurry, with a sakura tree in full bloom in the background, Yoshino tip-toes up in her wedding kimono in what looks like a kiss about to be. Shikaku, scarless and handsome in a traditional black garment, the Nara crest bright and rich on the jacket, stares down at his bride with such adoration, Shikamaru is almost embarrassed to look.

"I've only ever seen the official portraits of their wedding," muses Ino. "This is beautiful."

Shikamaru studies every inch, every corner and crevice of this man who couldn't possibly be his father. The mouth is not harsh or unfeeling, his eyes neither pondering or blank. They're soft almost, treating his mother as if a harder look would break the seemingly porcelain skin of her too happy face.

He doesn't realize how long it's been since he's spoken until Ino pokes him in the side with her toes. His eyes meet hers in the dim light of the living room, bewildered.

"What's with the stupid look?" she asks with a smirk. Shikamaru shakes his head slowly.

Quickly, as if the picture burned to touch, he sticks it back in the box he got it from. He starts to pack them all back up again, neatly stacking them upright and placing the lids back on. Ino watches him carefully.

"Do you think she really loved him that much?" she asks after a handful of long, silent minutes pass by and Shikamaru goes back to staring absently up at the ceiling, neck craned over the edge of the couch. Her voice is tentative, careful. The genius nearly scoffs.

"She dumped his entire office into the kitchen because she's mad at him for dying. I would think so, Ino."

His voice is casual but there's a sudden drop in his stomach, the heavy reality of his words weighing down on him like a second layer of gravity.

"I didn't mean your mother," she replies, almost in a whisper.

Shikamaru turns to look at her, eyebrow raised, and the confusion clears up as if someone had suddenly dunked his head into a bucket of ice water.

Ino's pale eyes water, a river dammed behind her blonde lashes, and the quiver on her lip tells him that it's neither of their parents that she's talking about. They speak without words, communicating as only two parts of an InoShikaCho triad can, and Shikamaru's first good mood in what feels like two ages on the earth fades.

He removes Ino's legs from his lap and starts to get up.

"Why do you keep running!" she screeches. "It happened, Shikamaru, they're gone! We need to talk a-"

"No, Ino," he snaps, "we don't."

"And what, we just go on pretending that it doesn't hurt!" Ino's voice heightens into a shriek. The dam has broken and cold tears slip over her smooth cheeks like rain and he no longer has the patience to watch.

"If that's what it takes," he says.

She follows him into the dark of the hall. Shikamaru silently seethes but doesn't mention it, beelining for the kitchen to put his cup in the sink. Ino's small hand tugs at the back of his shirt.

"Your dad would've wanted you to let it out, Shika. He would've wanted you to-"

Spinning quickly on his heels, he grabs both of Ino's wrists tightly. He peers down into her face, their noses nearly touching, and dark eyes burning. She tightens her lips to try and be brave but they tremble with the effort.

"We will not talk about it, Ino," he hisses, almost under his breath. "We will not sit here and bitch about how cruel fate is to shinobi because we've known since we could talk that these things happen. That even the strongest of us die. Nothing that my father ever said can change that."

Her head bows to look at her feet. Ino's shoulders tremble but she looks up at him once more, sniffling and flushed, before her eyes change. They churn and darken, the quiver in her lip suddenly steadying into a curl and she rips her wrists from his hands as if they burned.

"Maybe you're right, Shikamaru," she says. "Maybe you are a coward."

As only a ninja can, Ino spins on her heel gracefully and before he can blink again, she grabs her purse off the table and is gone, fleeing down the dark and empty halls of his house. The front door slides shut loudly and he can feel the faint, upset pulse of her chakra trekking down the walkway of his estate, down the road, and back to the village until all it once, it fades.

* * *

><p>"Checkmate."<p>

Yamato reaches over the shogi board and knocks over Kakashi's king. The white haired jonin blinks slowly at the board, having been staring out the window for the past seven minutes as his opponent pondered his next move. He double checks the board.

"You cheated," he says flatly. Yamato chuckles and it turns into a cough.

"No I-I didn't." He holds the back of his hand to his mouth but smiles nonetheless. "You let me win."

Kakashi waves this away as if the taichou had just said that elephants are red.

"Since when have I ever let you win at anything?"

Yamato lays his head back against his pillow, still coughing gently, and glares at the flickering artificial light above his bed. Sheepishly, he turns to Kakashi.

"Could you-"

Before he even finishes, the jonin gets to his feet with a quick stretch. He reaches out and clicks off the harsh fluorescent, careful not to move the IV, and settles for the faint yellow light. Everything dims significantly and although he turns on Yamato's bedside lamp, it does little to brighten the rather gray and unlit room. The taichou smiles up at him slyly.

"Romantic, isn't it? Like one of Jiraiya's books."

Kakashi chuckles and sits back down in his chair, crossing his long arms over his chest.

"There is nothing sexy about hospitals, Tenzo."

"Oh?" He raises a dark eyebrow. "Then why do you always sneak in well after visiting hours are over and stay until the dead of night?"

Yamato smiles jokingly but the hollows of his cheeks are still too deep to display any other expression than starving. Kakashi can't help but notice that his hair has begun to turn white at the temples. His eyes flicker to the nutrients back hanging from the IV and streaming directly into his stomach, ribs sharp and protruding from underneath the sheet.

The taichou's smile tightens.

"It's not as bad as it looks," he says. "I feel great."

Kakashi crinkles the corners of his eyes.

"Then you should be out of here in no time."

Yamato's face brightens hopefully and he nods in agreement. A few moments of comfortable silence passes and the taichou simply watches Kakashi gaze out the window.

The moonlight highlights the dark circles under his even darker eyes. He frowns.

"Have you been sleeping?"

Kakashi, once again pulled out of thought the way someone gets pulled from a dream, he blinks slowly at Yamato, as if wondering if he had spoken at all. He, a little painfully, tries to sit up straighter in bed.

"Few hours here and there," he replies with a lazy shrug. Kakashi watches him carefully, the heart monitor speeding up momentarily as Yamato keeps trying to get in a more comfortable position. Just that little bit of movement seems to exhaust him.

"Aren't you alternating between reconstruction and-" he tries to catch his breath, "and all those boring council meetings?"

Kakashi rubs the back of his white head slowly.

"I manage."

His tone, a little flatter than expected, implies that the subject should be changed. Yamato's heart finally slows to a comfortable pace once more and he finds Kakashi watching it, following the bright dip and climb of his pulse on the screen.

"I'm not gonna stop breathing anytime soon, senpai." Yamato leans his head back against his pillow once more and Kakashi notices the subtly slower pace of his blinks. He glances up at the clock above Yamato's bed, the time reading nearly one in the morning.

"Are you sure you don't want to be Commander?" he asks sleepily. "Genma is great. But he isn't you."

Kakashi nods, waiting for Yamato to fall completely asleep before he attempts to leave.

"Just a gut-feeling, Tenzo."

Halfway through a nearly incoherent sentence, the taichou falls asleep. His dark eyes flutter closed and his lips part, lungs wheezing to get enough air. The yellow light on his face makes his sockets appear sunken and his complexion sickly, worrying Kakashi as he gets up to leave.

His legs are stiff after sitting for so long. Quietly, as to not wake Yamato, Kakashi creeps over to the window and is about to slowly push up the glass so he can climb out when the door creaks open. He hurriedly lifts up the window and is about to swing his leg over the ledge when a familiar voice calls his out his name.

"Kakashi-sensei?"

The honorific freezes him in his tracks, straddling the ledge of the window. He curses Kami and turns to her.

"Sakura-chan," he says with an eye-crinkling smile. "I was just leaving."

The girl steps into the faint yellow light of Yamato's room and her surprised viridian eyes nearly look blue. She clutches the taichou's chart tightly to her chest and tucks a long strand of her pink hair behind her ear. His chest tightens at the sight of her.

Kakashi notices rather quickly the too dark circles under her eyes. She carries exhaustion on her shoulders like lead, looking small and slouched in her white lab coat.

"It's very late, sensei," she chides. "I hope you weren't keeping Yamato-taichou awake."

Not bothering to leave his place at the window, he shakes his white head, one hand rubbing sheepishly against the back of his neck.

"No, no. He's been asleep for hours." Sakura narrows her strange eyes at him. "I was just catching up on my reading and wanted some company."

The surprise is gone as quickly as it had come. She gives him an unamused look and starts checking Yamato's vitals, no longer particularly interested that he's there. Or at least, that's what he wants to believe as he starts to creep a few inches to the left, hoping to fall out of the window soon.

Bodily injury would be better than this.

He nearly ducks back into the night when she looks up at him again. Kakashi freezes and reinstates his crinkly smile.

"You're a horrible liar," she says after a few moments. Sakura scribbles something down and then sets her chart on the nightstand. Much like Tsunade, she puts her hands on her hips.

"Am I in trouble, Sakura-chan?" he asks lightly. The heaviness in the room is already suffocating and he wants nothing more to flee but it would be more awkward to run than to face her. She's already begun to purse her lips.

"As much as I want for Yamato-taichou to have visitors and be less troubled, he can't see anyone past 8 pm. He needs as much rest as he can physically get if he wants to make a full recovery."

Something in her tone implies that she's known about Kakashi's late visits. He says nothing more about it and immediately drops the fake smile from his eyes. Sakura looks almost grateful.

"How is he?"

"Well-" she begins.

"Please donn't give me the same crap that you give to Sai."

Her eyes change in their expression but it's too quick for him to name, over before it even really begins. Sakura smooths down the white lapels of her lab coat.

"Yamato is the only person know to survive the injection of Lord First's cells. In order to strengthen the White Zetsu, Obito needed to replicate the gene code in Yamato's cells that somehow suppresses and contains the power of Hashirama Senju's DNA."

Kakashi nods, letting her know to continue.

"The Tree replicated Yamato's cells at an incredibly fast rate in order to feed the Army. But it never left enough for Yamato himself, dividing his cells but taking them away as soon as they were finished replicating. This caused his body to begin eating itself in an effort to produce enough energy to keep making cells so that he would stay alive-"

"Hence the rapid starvation."

Sakura nods gravely.

"His organs began to fail at an alarming rate. If he had spent any more time linked with the Tree, he would've been dead long before we found him."

Kakashi, long before Sakura's lengthy explanation began, swung his other leg back over the ledge of the window. He sits on the edge of it, long arms crossed over his chest, and listening intently. His eyes flicker to the deep hollows of Yamato's cheeks.

"But he was released before that could happen. So everything should be fine in a few weeks after he gains some weight and his cells recover from the starvation to repair his organs."

Sakura chews on the corner of her lip, a nervous habit she's had since she was a child. It worries him. knowing all too well that bad news always follows.

"His health should improve very quickly and without a hitch, yes."

Kakashi raises a white brow when she doesn't continue. She looks concernedly towards Yamato, as if he might wake up and overhear. Once she's satisfied that he is sound asleep, she looks back up at Kakashi with something that resembles urgency.

He regrets asking.

"There's an fairly high chance that his career as a ninja is over."

* * *

><p><em><strong>Well ladies and gents, it appears I've made a return. I want to once again apologize for the discontinuation of Love Child. There was so much love for that story and I was deeply sorry to disappoint but I just didn't have it in me to continue. <strong>_

_**After a long break, and many previously failed attempts, I'm happy to share the beginnings of what could be an even greater story. Post-war Kakasaku, Shikaino, and definitely non-canon, thank you for reading When the Shadows Dance and I hope you give it as much love and interest as you did to Love Child. If not, that's cool too, maybe it is time to throw in the towel, haha. **_

_**Please enjoy and again, thank you so much. **_

_**With much love, **_

_**Rae. **_


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